My eyes ache from straining not to cry. At some point this afternoon, I realized that the only child to whom I would ever give birth turns thirty-three on the morrow. Over two thousand miles from the Airbnb in which I sit, my little boy lives his life in a city condo just blocks from Lake Michigan. I can hear his voice; and with a strain on technology, I can see a blurred image of his face. But I cannot hug him.
I spent the day fooling around here and there on the coast. I fixed breakfast in a rudimentary kitchenette and then took myself to the Chit Chat Cafe. My son called as I circled the block looking for a parking space. As with most of our conversations, we touched on both light and deep subjects as car after car tarried by my window. They gestured; I shook my head; they drove past. Eventually, we said goodbye and I walked towards the cafe.
A young man crouched on the sidewalk. Before him, an array of paintings formed a square. I watched as he started on a new piece, with spray cans and a bent paper cup as a guide. He made thin lines with the tines of a plastic fork. As I stood there, a group ascended the stairs to the cafe and one man said to another, “Are you here for the chit-chat or the coffee,” and the artist met my eyes. We both chuckled, softly, simultaneously.
Did that sound pretentious to you, I asked. He smiled. I don’t think he’s from around here, he allowed. You can tell. The tourists make jokes about things we don’t necessarily think are funny.
I told him that I liked his work. He said, Please, take one. I demurred. I’d want to pay you for it, I said. He shook his head. You stopped and looked, he remarked. That’s payment enough. Many people walk by like I’m invisible.
I picked two, one to send to my boy in Chicago, and the other for my friend Rachel. I handed him a bill from my wallet and he thanked me. We chatted for a few minutes. He told me he had been named for his Mexican grandmother’s surname, Cruz. It means ‘cross’, he told me, just in case I might not have known.
I took his works back to my car. As I returned, three women and their dogs stood in front of Cruz, who had selected a painting from the sidewalk and handed it to one of them. She thanked him and continued along the path, as I climbed the stars to the Chit-Chat Cafe, where a smiling barista made me a truly superb Americana.
It’s the seventh — but somewhere, two thousand miles from here, the eighth — day of the one hundred and twenty-seventh month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
- Patrick Corley & Maher Chebaro Sagrillo
- Patrick Corley & Chris Taggart
- My son Patrick and me in 2012
- My son and me in St. Louis, May 2022
- Me, my son Patrick, and my sister Joyce in Gillespie, Illinois, the city of my mother’s childhood; 09/04/2022.
- Patrick in a play at DPU, I believe
- My son and myself at the VALA Gallery in Kansas City, c. 2014.
- Chris Taggart and Patrick Corley
- My son in the California Delta